The invention pertains to a chroma control circuit for a digital television receiver.
A chroma control circuit of this kind is described in an INTERMETALL Data Book entitled "Digit 2000 VLSI Digital TV System", Freiburg/Br., June 1985, pages 163 to 174, which explain the CVPU 2210 NTSC comb-filter video processor. The chroma control circuit according to the aforementioned preambles is contained especially in FIG. 10-2 on page 165, which is described in Section 10.1.4 on page 167 and in Section 10.1.6 on page 168.
In the NTSC and PAL television standards, the hue of a picture element can be represented as an angle-coded signal with respect to a transmitter reference system. The different phase angles from 0.degree. to 360.degree. correspond to hues assigned thereto, the zero reference phase being the zero phase of one of the two standard color-difference signals, namely the B-Y signal. The transmitter reference system is the unmodulated chrominance subcarrier, which is suppressed during the horizontal trace period but is transmitted for a short time as a burst signal during the horizontal retrace period, the phase of the burst signal, referred to the B-Y color-difference signal, being
-180.degree. in the case of the NTSC television standard, and PA1 +/-135.degree. in the case of the PAL television standard.
In the prior art chroma circuit, the receiver reference system is the system clock, which has four times the frequency of, and is locked in frequency and phase to, the unmodulated chrominance subcarrier; four successive system-clock pulses, beginning with the zero phase of the B-Y color-difference signal, correspond to the phase angles of 0.degree., 90.degree., 180.degree. and 270.degree. of the unmodulated chrominance subcarrier. The latter, which is included in the composite color signal as mentioned above, is fed to the chroma control circuit after the chrominance and luminance components have been separated from the composite color signal by means of the chrominance filter.
In the NTSC and PAL television standards, the zero reference phase of the receiver reference system is the zero phase of the B-Y color-difference signal during the reception of the color burst. In that case, the R-Y color-difference signal is zero, and the phase comparison in the phase-locked loop is very simple.
If this chroma control circuit is to operate correctly, the chrominance subcarrier and the system clock, which has four times the chrominance-subcarrier frequency, must be locked together in frequency and phase. This is accomplished with a phase-locked loop, which causes the system clock to lock with the unmodulated chrominance subcarrier.
During the further development and improvement of this integrated chroma control circuit, the inventors discovered that the action of the phase-locked loop on the frequency and phase of the system clock is disadvantageous. For example, the phase-locked loop requires a voltage-controlled oscillator for the system clock whose deviation from the reference phase during a line period must not exceed 3.degree.. This corresponds to a permissible deviation of the system-clock frequency of only 0.03 per mill from its nominal value if the phase difference at the beginning of the scanned line is zero. Otherwise, the permissible frequency deviation is even smaller. The necessary frequency stability and control accuracy are thus very high, so that tunable crystal oscillators are used for generating the system clock.
In addition, the data resulting from the phase comparison must be fed to the voltage-controlled oscillator, which is a tunable crystal oscillator forming part of a separate monolithic integrated circuit, so that additional terminals and interconnecting leads are required for both integrated circuits.
Another problem arises if such chroma control circuits are used in television receivers with two or more receiving units which present the information from two or more signal sources or television channels on the screen simultaneously. Each of those receiving units requires a separate clock system whose frequency must be synchronized with the frequency of the respective color-burst signal. With the small differences in the frequencies of the various received color-burst signals, interaction of the associated voltage-controlled oscillators is hardly avoidable, which results in interferences on the screen. The greater the lock-in range of the tunable crystal oscillators, the stronger the interaction will be, because the frequency stability of the oscillators decreases with increasing lock-in range.